Zalando's smart intralogistics

Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion is a top pri­or­ity at Zalando, right from the start. That’s why the com­pany has been com­mit­ted to ser­vices such as free deliv­ery and returns from an early stage and actively meets grow­ing demands such as same-day deliv­ery. Zalando pro­motes inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies and automa­tion solu­tions in order to remain eco­nom­i­cal in the face of these chal­lenges. This is how a pro­duc­tive part­ner­ship devel­oped with the Munich robot­ics com­pany Mag­a­zino, which spe­cial­izes in e‑commerce and intral­o­gis­tics with its mobile robots: they can nav­i­gate intel­li­gently in the ware­house, grip pre­cisely and never tire. In short, a Mag­a­zino robot can pick com­pletely autonomously and per­form many work steps like a human employee. The idea is that it relieves logis­tics employ­ees of uner­gonomic tasks such as bend­ing down and stretch­ing far up when pick­ing prod­ucts from the high­est or low­est shelf lev­els. In this way, Zalando can relieve its employ­ees. For Zalando, this is also one of the core issues when it comes to new tech­nolo­gies – since the con­struc­tion of its first logis­tics cen­tre in Erfurt in 2012. Invest­ment in automa­tion and robotic solu­tions is there­fore the next log­i­cal step for Zalando and its logis­tics strategy.

At the end of Feb­ru­ary 2018, Zalando acquired shares in Mag­a­zino and put two TORU robots into oper­a­tion in Erfurt in the sum­mer of 2018. In 2019 the robots moved to the Zalando site in Lahr and the fleet has grown to eight robots. In 2021 the fleet was expanded to 28 robots in total. The robots sup­port “stow”, i.e. stor­age, and “pick”, i.e. order pick­ing in an area of approx­i­mately 16.000 square meters. TORU places the shoe boxes in the out­bound process at a han­dover sta­tion that is con­nected with a conveyor.

The spe­cial thing about them: in con­trast to other automa­tion tech­nolo­gies, in which only entire load car­ri­ers such as pal­lets or crates can be moved, TORU robots have intel­li­gent cam­era tech­nol­ogy and can thus rec­og­nize, pick and trans­port indi­vid­ual objects. They thus fit into the chaotic ware­hous­ing sys­tem used in Zalando’s logis­tics cen­tres. At the Lahr site, humans and robots work along­side each other – safely and pro­duc­tively. Employ­ees are relieved and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion increased. The result: win-win-win